


your love is sunlight

by Kangoo



Series: LGBT Destiny Month 2019 [4]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Feelings, LGBT Destiny Month, M/M, and dumb, but listen it's 4 am and i'm kind of slightly drunk so YA KNOW, this is sappy, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 01:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19097458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: theme: sunshinecayde comes to term with his feelings





	your love is sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> cayde, a whole ace: feelings? i don't know her  
> razel with minimal mood lighting: hey  
> cayde, a whole (grey) ace: oh. oh shit nevermind.
> 
> edit: now it's a fte story, woohoo. title from hozier's "sunlight" (the whole song is like. A Good Fit, for once

In the end, love doesn’t come to him in a great fanfare of remembered memories and burning passion. It’s not loud, or obvious, or much of anything at all, really.

It comes with sunlight.

 

Cayde isn't prone to nightmares. He's seen some shit, but he's not haunted by them. He's not... Plagued by his regrets either. He has a lot of those – he's made more than his share of mistakes – but he's learned to move on. It's the most valuable lesson he's ever learned: earn your forgiveness rather than agonize over your guilt.

So, Cayde isn't really a poor sleeper. He's got his fair share of bad dreams, but nothing to drive him to insomnia.

Still. Some nights are worse than others.

He sits at the very edge of the Tower hangar, watching the pitch black sky stretching ahead of him. The moon is hidden behind a cover of dark clouds. The storm refuses to break: the clammy heat weighs heavy on him, the scent of ozone thick in the air.

He's glad he can't sweat, but even then the night feels stifling. Static electricity sends the faulty coupling in his legs awry. His right foot spasms with a faint crackle. His uneasiness isn’t a strictly physical feeling, though.

There’s… a dream, lingering in his mind like cobwebs. Red, and a touch — soft, warm, skin-on-skin. He’s not sure it’s a memory. He hopes it’s a memory. He’s afraid it’s a memory.

He’s… confused.

Dreams of the Queen of Heart tend to have that effect. It’s a mixed blessing. Half relief, to have that kind of _joy-melancholy-nostalgia_ to hold on to. Half grief to find it missing, a lack, unsure if he wants it back or to forget it for good. A kind of elated pain, like the barely-remembered ache of pressing a bruise.

Cayde doesn’t think he misses being in love. Yet part of him longs for the way his entire body seems lighter, brighter, after a good dream; craves the dread of waking up in something kind of like cold sweat, hand outreached, chasing after a ghost.

Memory loss and feelings are a dangerous combination.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, echoing the chaos in his mind and the clatter of steps on the metal behind him. A drop of water lands just under his eye, ice cold. Just like that the storm breaks and the rain is falling, or rather pouring, the pitter patter of raindrops so loud suddenly it almost drowns out the sound of a voice.

“You’re up early.”

Cayde tilts his head back, throws Razel a Look. “ _You’re_ up late.”

Razel shrugs. He has that particular jerkiness to him, betraying of insomnia rather than a voluntary all-nighter. Like his skin doesn’t fit right somehow. He drops next to Cayde, no grace at all yet with an absolute certainty in his balance. He’s only clumsy when he doesn’t try otherwise. Which is often, mind. His legs hang over the edge, swinging absentmindedly.

He’s bored, Cayde realizes. He has nothing to do, too much nervous energy and no way to get rid of it, and the overabundance of it is making him vibrates right out of his skin. Listlessness doesn’t suit Razel.

He’ll be heading out again soon. Disappearing for weeks, with barely a handful of calls to assure them of his continued survival. Cayde is surprised to feel a pang of regret at the thought of Razel already leaving.

That’s new. He’s not in the habit of clinging to his dates, or his friends. Even before being a Vanguard he was very much the quintessential Hunter, obsessed with freedom and very little else.

Maybe the Vanguard is what changed it. He learned to be part of a pack, for a lack of a better hunting analogy. Got used to the company. Must be it.

Razel’s shoulders are tense, his jaw working with the same nervous fidgeting that makes him swing his legs over the empty air under them. Even when he’s standing still he’s champing at the bit to get moving again. It’s not impatience, not quite. Cayde is pretty sure he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Just to try it out, he pokes Razel in the arm. He freezes, surprised, then all the tension seems to drain out of him at once as he notices it. The fidgeting doesn’t stop for long. But that’s just Razel, not the weird antsiness that drives him in the last hours of his stay in the Tower.

Groaning in defeat he lets himself slump sideways, falling half on top of Cayde and burrowing against his side.

“I hate this,” he says. “The… _waiting_.”

“The rain never stopped you before.”

“To be honest, it’s more like… _Ikora_ stopping me. She doesn’t like it when I leave without saying goodbye.”

Razel never leaves without saying goodbye to _him_ , Cayde thinks smugly.

He watches him out of the corner of his eye. In the gloom and angled just so, with his lashes covering the glow of his eyes, he looks almost human, deathly pale with ink black hair. Then lightning strikes and in that brief flash he is something more, eyes wide with wonder and very, very still.

Cayde looks away. There’s a churning in his guts, unease like a betrayal. The Queen of Heart—

Might not have been real, is definitely dead and has been for decades. A pipe dream, a fantasy more than a memory.

It’s easier to think like that when Razel is near. Easier to let go of things when he’s a tangible weight at your side, hotter than even his Exo body which keeps overheating in the warmer months. Even when he’s silent like he is now, without his usual ramble to fill the void.

“You’re weirdly quiet today,” Cayde says, gently prodding.

“You’re in one of your moods,” Razel says. It’s not judgmental, a simple statement of a fact. “And the storm is pretty loud.”

That it is. Cayde takes Razel’s hand in his, tapping the seconds separating lightning from thunder in the crease of his palm. “It’s getting farther away,” he says after a quick calculation.

“Cool. I don’t like the rain.”

They don’t say anything else after that. Not while the rain keeps pouring and the thunder slowly fades from an overwhelming drum to a distant rumble, then fades entirely. The lightning strikes get fewer and further in between. The rain slows to a stop.

Then the clouds dissipate like so much fog in the early morning sun, and dawn finally breaks.

It feels like waking up from a dream of drowning, breaking the surface of sleep and gasping for a breath of air. Night gives an odd twist to thing, exhaustion, solitude and darkness combining into a cocktail of weird introspection. The sunlight puts an end to all of those, leaving only a tired clarity.

Cayde feels his mood lift as he watches the sun turns from dark grey to a dull blue to the pink and gold hues of dawn. The sun is bright red as it crosses the horizon. The air is pleasantly cool after the rain and the sunlight is a welcome warmth across his metal plates.

He turns to Razel. Stops.

Razel isn’t looking at him. His eyes are lost on the early morning sun, drinking its sight with the air of someone who doesn’t often get the chance to do so, or rarely has the patience to try. The sunlight falls over his face, bathing him in gold. His markings seem to glow as bright as his eyes then, fiery orange glittering like precious metal. He’s smiling. Just a soft, unconscious small at the edge of his mouth, slowly growing until it creases his eyes. His hair has come undone from its usual ponytail, strands sticking in every direction at once, messy and feathery and—

He feels a pang in his chest and has to fight the urge to clutch his heart. It’s not sadness, he’s sure of it, nor relief, though it feels somewhat like it. It’s something far greater and far sweeter, a kind of painful joy—

Oh.

 _Oh_.

His chest seems impossibly lighter all the sudden despite the weight of the realization. It shocks a laugh out of him.

Razel turns a curious look to him. The sunlight catches in his lashes, speckling them gold as it throws soft shadows over his face.

“Cayde?”

“It’s fine, buddy, I’m...” He looks at him again, drinking in the sight, off-kilter and delighted by it. “Yeah. I’m great.”

(Love feels pretty good, as it turns out.)

**Author's Note:**

> _"A soul that’s born in cold and rain  
>  Knows sunlight, sunlight, sunlight"_


End file.
